Minority Report (2002) - Quotes

Taglines: You Can't Hide

Taglines: The Future Can Be Seen. Murder Can be Prevented. The Guilty Punished Before the Crime is Committed. The System is Perfect. It's Never Wrong. Until It Comes After You.

Taglines: Get Ready to RUN!

Taglines: The system is perfect until it comes after you.

Taglines: Everybody Runs

Taglines: What would you do if you were accused of a murder you had not committed … yet?

John Anderton: No doubt the precogs have already seen this.

Lamar Burgess: No doubt.

John Anderton: [Lowers his hood, exposing a shaved head; Burgess raises his revolver] You see the dilemma, don't you? If you don't kill me, the precogs were wrong and Precrime is over. If you do kill me, you go away, but it proves the system works. The precogs were right. So, what are you gonna do now? What's it worth? Just one more murder? You'll rot in hell with a halo, but people will still believe in Precrime. All you have to do is kill me, like they said you would. Except - you know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice, Lamar. Like I did.

Lamar Burgess: [Steps closer to John; Fires a shot; Leans against John for support as Precrime officers arrive; Collapses to the floor and dies, having shot himself] Yes. I have a choice. And I've made it. Forgive me, John. Forgive me... Forgive me, my boy...

Agatha: Think about the lives that little girl has saved.

Lamar Burgess: Think about all the lives that little girl has saved. Think about all the lives she will save. That little girl could have saved Sean.

John Anderton: Don't you EVER SAY HIS NAME!!

Male Precog #1: You used the memory of my dead son to set me up.

John Anderton: You used the memory of my dead son to set me up!! That was the one thing you knew that would drive me to murder!

Male Precog #2: What are you gonna do now, Lamar?

John Anderton: What are you gonna do now, Lamar?

Male Precog #2: How are you gonna -

John Anderton: - shut me up?

Male Precog #1: Forgive me, John.

Lara Anderton: I'd like a word with my husband.

Gideon: You're not authorized. How did you get in here?

Rufus T. Riley: Yeah, being concert master for the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra is one of our most popular choices.

Customer: No, no, no. I wanna kill my boss.

Rufus T. Riley: You sick bastard. You're the kind of person that makes this a terrible world to live in!

John Anderton: Why should I trust you?

Dr. Iris Hineman: You shouldn't. You shouldn't trust anyone. Certainly not the Attorney General who just wants it all for himself, and not the young Federal agent who wants your job, not even the old man who just wants to hold on to what he created. Don't trust anyone. Just find the Minority Report.

John Anderton: I'm not a murderer. I've never even met the man I'm supposed to kill.

Dr. Iris Hineman: And yet, a chain of events has started, a chain that will lead inexorably to his death.

John Anderton: Not if I stay away from him.

Dr. Iris Hineman: How can you avoid a man you've never met?

John Anderton: You can tell me how someone could fake a pre-vision.

Dr. Iris Hineman: How would I know that?

John Anderton: Because you invented Precrime.

Dr. Iris Hineman: [laughs dryly] If a series of genetic mistakes and science gone haywire can be called "invention", then yes, I invented Precrime.

John Anderton: You don't sound very proud.

Dr. Iris Hineman: I'm not. I was trying to cure them, not turn them into something else.

John Anderton: Cure who?

Dr. Iris Hineman: The innocents we now use to stop the guilty.

John Anderton: You're talking about... the Precogs.

Dr. Iris Hineman: You think the three in the tank came out of a test tube? They are merely the ones who survived.

Lamar Burgess: You can't run, John!

John Anderton: Everybody runs.

Anderton: Cops aren't allowed inside the Temple.

Witwer: Really? You've never been inside?

Anderton: We keep strict separation so that no one can be accused of tampering.

Witwer: So I'll be the first one to go in, then.

Anderton: Maybe you didn't hear me.

Witwer: If it's a question of authority...

Anderton: No, there is no question. You don't have any.

Witwer: I have a warrant in my pocket that says different.

Anderton: Show it to me.

Danny Witwer: I thought they stopped the murder?

Jad: That's just an echo. Precog déjà vu. Some of the really bad ones, the precogs see over and over again.

John Anderton: [about Witwer's father] What does he think about your chosen line of work?

Danny Witwer: I don't know. He was shot and killed when I was 15 on the steps of our church in Dublin. I know what it's like to lose someone close, John. Course, nothing is like the loss of a child. I don't have any children of my own, so I can only imagine what that must've been like. To lose your son – in such a public place like that. At least now you and I have the chance to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen to anyone –

John Anderton: Why don't you cut the cute act, Danny boy, and tell me exactly what it is you're looking for?

Danny Witwer: Flaws.

John Anderton: There hasn't been a murder in 6 years. There's nothing wrong with the system, it is--

Danny Witwer: Perfect. I agree. But if there's a flaw, it's human. It always is.

John Anderton: Why'd you catch that?

Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.

John Anderton: You're certain?

Danny Witwer: Yeah.

John Anderton: But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen.

Gideon: Careful, Chief. You dig up the past, all you get is dirty.

Gideon: You're a part of my flock now, John. Welcome. It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true.

Lycon: It's like my daddy used to say: in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Dr. Solomon Eddie: You do understand I can't just give you new irises. The scanners will read the scar tissue, alarms will go off, and large men with guns will appear …

Wally the Caretaker: I like you, Chief. You've always been nice to me. I'll give you two minutes before I hit the alarm.

Lamar Burgess: [Showing off a revolver, given as a gift by his staff] Revolvers like this one were given to generals at the end of the Civil War by their troops. The cylinders were loaded with five gold-plated bullets, to symbolize the end of the destruction and death that had ripped the country apart for five years. Ladies and gentlemen, with PreCrime going national, maybe we can all look forward to a time when none of us will have to discharge another firearm ever again.

Lamar Burgess: [kills Witwer] You know what I hear, Danny? Nothing. No footsteps up the stairs, no hovercraft outside the window, no clickety-click of little spyders. Do you know why I can't hear any of those things, Danny? Because right now, the precogs can't see a thing.

Lamar Burgess: We don't choose the things we believe in; they choose us.

Agatha: You can choose …

Agatha: You still have a choice.

Agatha: Can you see?

Dr. Iris Hineman: [Offering John the antidote to a plant that has poisoned him] You'd better drink this. Soon you won't be able to swallow, and then you'll be totally buggered.

Dr. Iris Hineman: [She starts crushing a mutated plant; the plant cuts her palm] It's funny how all living organisms are alike. When the chips are down, when the pressure is on, every creature on the face of the Earth is interested in one thing and one thing only. Its own survival.

Dr. Iris Hineman: Sometimes, in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark.

Dr. Iris Hineman: I used to joke with Lamar that we were the mother and father of Precrime. Well, in my experience, parents very often see their children as they want them to be and not as they are.

Dr. Iris Hineman: I was doing genetic research at the Woodhaven Clinic, treating children of drug addicts. This was ten years ago, when neuroin first hit the streets. It was an impure form of the drug, not the engineered cocktail that became so popular among the more educated. All of these kids were born with severe brain damage; most died before the age of twelve. Those few, those precious few who survived, they had a gift. I call it a gift; for them it was more like a cosmic joke. They would wake up in the night, curled up in the corner of their room, screaming, clawing at the wallpaper. Because, when these little children, as they closed their eyes at night, they dreamt only of murder, over and over, one after the other. And it didn't take long for us to realize that the real nightmare was that these so-called dreams were about to come true; these murders were actually happening!

John Anderton: [Final voice-over; [peace] In 2054, the six-year Precrime experiment was abandoned. All prisoners were unconditionally pardoned and released, though police departments kept watch on many of them for years to come. Agatha and the twins were transferred to an undisclosed location, a place where they could find relief from their gifts. A place where they could live out their lives in ].

John Anderton: [[Abraham Lincoln] In the middle of the Civil War, for example, ] suspended the writ of habeas corpus observing that a limb may be sacrificed to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.